“C stands for circus,” chanted the irrepressible Betty Burd.
“Well, this C doesn’t,” Adele told her. “Starr looks as though she were about to see the light.”
“Closing exercises are only two weeks away,” that maiden replied as she sat thinking hard with threaded needle suspended in air. “Oh, I do believe that I have it! Might it not be a closing-exercise party?”
“Starr, you were well named! You are brighter than the shiniest constellation in the heavens,” Adele cried. “That’s it! Madame Deriby just told me that she had decided that we might have a party the night before we depart for our homes. We may invite our brothers and that will provide us with escorts to check our baggage and all that sort of thing on the railroad journey.”
“Oh, how nice!” Carol Lorens exclaimed. “I have so wanted you girls to meet my splendid brother Peter, and since Evelyn hasn’t a brother, I’ll share him with her.”
“Of course they don’t have to be brothers,” Adele declared. “We may invite any boy friend, Madame Deriby said, that our mothers would permit us at home to have for escorts.”
“No need to ask whom Adele will invite,” Peggy Pierce sang out to tease, but Adele was not like Rosamond. She did not resent Peggy’s nonsense.
“Of course you know,” she replied frankly, which spoiled the fun of teasing her. “His initials are D. B.”
“Would you leave your poor brother Jack out of the party?” Betty Burd inquired.
“No indeed!” Della replied as she glanced at the lassie next to her. “I was planning to ask Doris to invite Jack if she didn’t mind, since she hasn’t a brother of her own.”